Droid Bionic Options While on a Call

You can do other things while you’re making a call on the Droid Bionic: Just press the Home button to run an application, read old e-mail, check an appointment, or do whatever. Activities such as these don’t disconnect you, though your cellular carrier may not allow you to do other things with the phone while you’re on a call.

To return to a call after doing something else, swipe down the notifications at the top of the screen and touch the notification for the current call. You return to the Connected screen, similar to the one shown in this figure. Continue talking.

If you’re using earphones, you can press the phone’s Power Lock button during the call to turn off the display and lock the phone. Turn off the display so that you don’t accidentally touch the Mute or End button during the call.

You can connect or remove the earphones at any time during a call. The call is neither disconnected nor interrupted when you do so.

You can’t accidentally mute or end a call when the phone is placed against your face; a sensor in the phone detects when it’s close to something and the touchscreen is automatically disabled.

Don’t worry about the phone being too far away from your mouth; it picks up your voice just fine.

To mute a call, touch the Mute button. The Mute icon appears as the phone’s status (atop the touchscreen).

Touch the Speaker button to be able to hold the phone at a distance to listen and talk, which allows you to let others listen and share in the conversation. The Speaker icon appears as the phone’s status when the speaker is active.

Don’t hold the phone to your ear when the speaker is active.

If you’re wading through one of those nasty voice mail systems, touch the Dialpad button so that you can Press 1 for English when necessary.

When using a Bluetooth headset, connect the headset before you make the call.

If you need to dial an international number, press and hold the 0 (zero) key until the plus-sign (+) character appears. Then input the rest of the international number.

The squat U character on the dialpad’s pound-sign (#) key is used to produce a space in a telephone number.

To add a pause to a phone number, press the Menu soft key and choose the Add Pause command. The pause shows up as a comma in the phone number. The pause is about 2 seconds long.

You can add a pause prompt to a phone number: Press the Menu soft key and choose the command Add Wait. The wait shows up as a semicolon character in the phone number. When the Droid Bionic dials that character, a prompt appears on the touchscreen; dialing doesn’t proceed until you touch the Yes button to continue.

You hear an audio alert whenever the call is dropped or the other party hangs up. The disconnection can be confirmed by looking at the phone, which shows that the call has ended.

You cannot place a phone call when the phone has no service; check the signal strength.

You cannot place a phone call when the phone is in Airplane mode.

The Call in Progress notification icon is a useful thing. When you see this notification, it means that the phone is connected to another party. To return to the phone screen, swipe down the status bar and touch the phone call’s notification. You can then press the End Call button to disconnect or just put the phone to your face to see who’s on the line.